Given four years to evaluate Mark Mangino’s first recruiting class now, it’s quite admirable what Kansas University’s football coach was able to put together in half the time with a bad, bad program to pitch.

Charles Gordon, Jon Cornish, Jerome Kemp, Dominic Roux, David Ochoa, Bob Whitaker — they all play prominent roles as red-shirt juniors now. Junior-college transfer Bill Whittemore also was in that group, and he wasn’t too shabby, either.

But another part of that original class will say adios Saturday, when KU takes on Iowa State at 11:30 a.m. in the regular-season finale at Memorial Stadium.

Nick Reid, Brandon Perkins, Kevin Kane and Mark Simmons committed to Mangino and his staff — somewhat blindly — as the former Oklahoma assistant rushed to put things together in time for signing day. They were needed badly enough to warrant skipping a redshirt. And Mangino speaks fondly of their sacrifice in helping rebuild a program in shambles.

“With those kids in particular,” Mangino said, “it was all based on faith.”

Reid, a quarterback at the time, actually committed while the coaching search was ongoing. The rest weren’t interested in KU — Simmons actually was already committed to Oklahoma State — until Mangino started pursuing them.

KU linebacker Kevin Kane returns an interception for a touchdown against Nebraska. Kane will play his final home game Saturday when the Jayhawks play host to Iowa State.

“I like challenges. I knew it would be a challenge coming in and helping coach Mangino and his staff get the program better,” said Perkins, who chose KU over Colorado State, New Mexico and Texas Tech. “I believed in them, and I’m thankful they believed in me.”

Mangino has dozens of targets each year and dozens of different ways to try to lure them in. Yet he seems to recall small details in the way he landed about every player in his first recruiting season as head coach.

“We were able to hold on to Nick Reid’s commitment,” Mangino said. “We were able to get to Brandon Perkins’ home and visit with him and his family. We had Kevin Kane, who was not highly recruited, but the more I watched tape of him the more I liked him.

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“The stories go on and on after that.”

Like Perkins, Kane remembers his feelings when asked to attend KU, right up the road from his home in the Kansas City area.

“Mangino has a work ethic and it’s a sense of coaching where he won’t accept failure,” Kane said. “… Just seeing that was definitely a good situation to come to.”

Kansas University defenders Nick Reid and Brandon Perkins (59) team up to take down Oklahoma quarterback Rhett Bomar. Reid and Perkins are both members of KU coach Mark Mangino's first recruiting class who will be playing their final home game Saturday against Iowa State.

They’re just four of 20 seniors who will be honored Saturday. But it was their class that set an initial foundation — a two-way gamble that, for the most part, paid off.

“We had to take some chances too,” Mangino said. “But when you look back and consider that first recruiting class, it ended up being a pretty doggone good recruiting class.”